Species need refuges

Peter Aldhous reports how climate mapping can help plan biodiversity conservation (9 August, p 8). It is already doing so in the UK: the RSPB has been involved in climate mapping projects for all of Europe's breeding birds and for species covered by the UK biodiversity action plan.

The outputs from these projects are helping us at the RSPB to adapt our conservation programmes to the impacts of climate change. One of our key conclusions so far is that areas protected from pollution, over-abstraction of resources and persecution of wildlife are likely to become more, not less, important for conservation. We will not necessarily be able to predict the species that will be supported by such sites in the future, but it is clear that we will need larger, not smaller, protected areas.